


In My Life

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - High School, Drabble, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-12
Updated: 2010-02-12
Packaged: 2017-10-07 04:49:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/61577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's graduation day for Roy Mustang. High School AU. November 2009.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In My Life

When everybody had left Roy sneaked back into the corridor and stared at the list for a long time. The tiny, neat characters of his name besides the number 1. He felt a pang of pride and then looked around, making sure nobody caught him looking – the the reflection on the glass panel protecting the results was certainly his, and was certainly smug. He looked at it, barely recognizing himself, the blue school uniform already some sort of relic around him.

Then he heard someone clear their throat behind him.

Roy turned around, heart pounding.

Riza Hawkeye, standing in front of him with a demanding expression on her face. Where had she come from all of the sudden, ninja-like? He hadn't seen her in a little while now. Her father used to be Roy's class Lab and homeroom teacher and Roy had been class representative so he got to knew Riza and her father very well. The thing he most remembered about her were her perfectly white socks and her quietness.

`Hi, Riza. What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be in class?´

She looked away.

`I had a break between classes,´ he didn't know how but Roy knew she was lying. `I knew you were graduating today, Mister Mustang.´

He was taken aback by her formality. She had always been formal. A formal, lively girl.

Roy looked at her watch.

`At five p.m. today I stop being a student in this school. You can start calling me _Roy_. I'm no longer your senior.´

He smiled – somewhere on this floor a music class was going on, spare and awkward piano notes filled the air. The same feeling that you get watching an old film. Something sinking in, Roy couldn't tell what, a strange tension at the bottom of his stomach.

`Did you get into that college you wanted?´ She asked.

Did he remember talking about it with her? Did he remember talking about his aspirations, the future? Maybe.

He nodded, mockingly offended that she should doubt it; he pointed at the exam results, his name in tiny, neat characters in the First Place.

`Ah, I know what this is all about,´ he teased her. `You've come to wish me luck in college. Have you made a cake for me? Some chocolate?´

Riza frowned; Roy half-remembered that expression from visiting her house, half-remembered from passing each other by on the way to the train.

`You don't have to be shy about it, Riza.´

`No, I didn't bring you a cake.´

Roy laughed. Riza was a very nice, very polite girl, but he knew her to have a temper sometimes.

When he stopped laughing he noticed that the school seemed particularly quiet. Maybe because due to the graduation few classes were going on in this floor. Maybe it was just him, yes, it must be here. The girl locked he hands behind her back and shifted her weight from one leg to the other – silence fell, companionable but not without tension. Roy wondered if she had really came to wish him good luck (to say goodbye?) and felt suddenly touched.

Talking to Riza made him think about this peculiar, pivotal moment in his life – he thought that maybe this was the last time he'd ever stand in this precise spot in the school corridor, the last time he'd wear this uniform and sit in his chair in class and stare at the weird white patch on the left high corner of the blackboard. It was a bit dramatic, but it made him feel nostalgic, and curiously alone, but not in a bad way.

`Why are you smiling?´ Riza asked.

Her eyes seemed almost too inquisitive, like she really wanted to know and wasn't just being polite. And for no reason in particular, he felt compelled to tell her the truth.

`I'm thinking maybe this is the last time in my life I'm standing here, in this very spot.´

`You look excited,´ she said then and Roy realized, yes, that's exactly it, I'm excited.

Riza glance the clock on the wall uncomfortably. Roy knew she must be needing to get to class soon but somehow felt reluctant to end their conversation. He wondered if he would ever even see her again in his life, in her life.

`Wait, you can do me a favor,´ he said, going through the stuff in his briefcase. He fished out a worn library book. `Give this back to your father, he let me borrow it for the exams the other week.´

Riza held her hand out and received the book as if an alien object, reading the cover to make sure it was what Roy said it was.

`I have to go,´ she said, sounding as disappointed as Roy felt about it, too.

They were standing very close together and Roy noticed that she had grown some inches, since they last met or she had grown from the girl he remembered. She was now, what? fifteen? She was becoming sort of beautiful, or maybe he was just being weird about it.

He put his hand on top of her head, he didn't ruffle her hair like a big brother would do, he just let it rest there and softly run the tip of his fingers along blonde strands of hair – when he realized how inappropriate it was he stopped, looking terribly embarrassed.

Tongue-tied but trying, he told her:

`Well, if you ever pass by my college come and say Hi.´

Roy thought, Well that's lame but I kind of mean it.

For a while she didn't answer.

`I wonder,´ she commented.

`What?´

`What college I want to get into when I graduate. Maybe I could...´

`What?´ He urged her.

She shook her head.

`Nothing.´

The faintest blush – so faint that Roy convinced himself it wasn't there. But just in case it was...

`Yes,´ he told her, vague as he could. `I'd like that very much.´

The bell rang.

She couldn't stay any longer. She made a half-serious, half-teasing bow at him, at _her senior_, and walked hurriedly but with decorum (no running in the hallways) away, out of sight, disappeared down the stairs.

Roy was left staring at the empty space where the girl had been, much like he had been staring at the exam results before, or his reflection on the glass.

Strangely enough he hoped (&amp; had the feeling it would be so) he would see her again sometime.


End file.
